


Collapsed In Love

by tackytiger



Series: Modern Love [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Brief mention of consensual mild breathplay, Draco Malfoy is a Dragon Prince, Established Relationship, Found Family, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Jealousy, Love, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Possessive Harry, Post-Hogwarts, mentions of illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:15:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28168341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tackytiger/pseuds/tackytiger
Summary: Months ago, my lovely friend sitp mentioned that I should write a follow-up to Modern Love, showing Harry's marriage proposal from Draco's POV. I gleefully stored the idea up until now as I thought it would be a good way to wish Liv a happy birthday, so here it is. (I even tried to add some smut especially for her, because how else to show love for a fandom friend!)Liv, I'm so glad we got to know each other this year. The fandom is richer for all your wonderful, heartfelt, incisive recs, and I am richer for your friendship. Happiest of birthdays to you!Thank you to maesterchill, m0stlyvoid, and shealwaysreads, without whom nothing would ever get done - you are the best.Just a quick note - I write proposals quite a bit, but I just want to make it clear that I personally don't believe that marriage is necessarily an important step in a relationship, nor is it the only valid expression of lifelong commitment. I just think that both Harry and Draco would be the traditional types!There are brief mentions of the illness of a minor character who is suffering from cancer, but they may be upsetting for some readers. Harry is also a bit possessive and jealous in this. There are also some blink-and-you'll-miss-it light bdsm undertones.Title from the song To the End by Blur.And finally, this fic is set in the 'verse of a previous fic of mine. The opening scene briefly contains an original character created for that fic, plus a reference to an event in the first fic involving a massive fuck-off dragon. If you haven't read Modern Love then I suggest skipping to after the line break as that's just a good old-fashioned bedroom scene!
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Series: Modern Love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2063550
Comments: 27
Kudos: 367





	Collapsed In Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sitp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sitp/gifts).



> Months ago, my lovely friend sitp mentioned that I should write a follow-up to Modern Love, showing Harry's marriage proposal from Draco's POV. I gleefully stored the idea up until now as I thought it would be a good way to wish Liv a happy birthday, so here it is. (I even tried to add some smut especially for her, because how else to show love for a fandom friend!)
> 
> Liv, I'm so glad we got to know each other this year. The fandom is richer for all your wonderful, heartfelt, incisive recs, and I am richer for your friendship. Happiest of birthdays to you!
> 
> Thank you to maesterchill, m0stlyvoid, and shealwaysreads, without whom nothing would ever get done - you are the best.
> 
> Just a quick note - I write proposals quite a bit, but I just want to make it clear that I personally don't believe that marriage is necessarily an important step in a relationship, nor is it the only valid expression of lifelong commitment. I just think that both Harry and Draco would be the traditional types!
> 
> There are brief mentions of the illness of a minor character who is suffering from cancer, but they may be upsetting for some readers. Harry is also a bit possessive and jealous in this. There are also some blink-and-you'll-miss-it light bdsm undertones.
> 
> Title from the song To the End by Blur.
> 
> And finally, this fic is set in the 'verse of a previous fic of mine. The opening scene briefly contains an original character created for that fic, plus a reference to an event in the first fic involving a massive fuck-off dragon. If you haven't read Modern Love then I suggest skipping to after the line break as that's just a good old-fashioned bedroom scene!

Draco should have known this would be a bad idea. 

The sky is swollen with unshed snow, and Draco’s forgotten his gloves, and Marie is looking a bit tired after the walk to the top of Parliament Hill, and that’s _definitely_ a lump of frozen dogshit right where Draco was about to perform the ritual. 

“So you’re basically a dragon king?” Even though this whole thing was Teddy’s idea, he’s not helping with any of the preparations. He also looks deeply unimpressed, though that’s sort of just his face these days. 

“No, no, don’t be silly,” Draco says. “That’s my father. If anything, I’m a dragon prince?” He tries for arch, wondering whether it’ll land. There’s no telling with Teddy these days, who’s in his second year at Hogwarts and seems to find everything and everyone tiresome, and who keeps his hair black most of the time. But he’s inspecting the sword with interest (and that had been fun for Draco, carrying it on his back on the Tube hidden by one of Harry’s epic cloaking spells). Draco thinks there might be a small smile on Teddy’s face, and his hair is flickering at the ends, whispers of neon sizzling through the strands, a sure sign that he’s forgetting to think about himself for a minute.

Teddy runs a finger over the handle of the sword, pokes at the tip of the arrow-shaped pommel, says quietly, “This is quite cool.”

From behind them, Draco can hear Harry laughing, and he doesn’t realise he’s smiling at the sound of it until he sees Teddy rolling his eyes. Below them, far in the distance, the long fingers of skyscrapers reach for the lowering clouds. The view is slightly warped, like they’re looking through a dirty window, but it’s only the veil of warding spells protecting the wizarding space that’s been at the top of the hill since the Bronze Age.

Without looking back, he calls, “I’m ready”, and hears Marie muttering something unimpressed-sounding to Harry, and Harry laughs again. It’s a big deal that she’s even here with them, but she has a soft spot for Teddy, and he’s about the only person she can never say no to. Also, Draco thinks she’s looking for distractions—she’s scared, because she broke a rib coughing three days ago, and she’s been spending a lot of time with her mum recently too. He closes his eyes for a second and wishes as hard as he can—like he’s been wishing for four years now—that she’ll finally think about going to St Mungos. He and Hermione are so close with the new legislation. He just hopes they’ll be in time for Marie.

He hefts the sword, giving it a few experimental slashes, and from her folding chair Marie calls, “This is embarrassing for all of us, Draco.” 

Draco chances a glance at Harry then, but he has to look away very quickly at the expression on Harry’s face. Harry loves watching him do magic.

“It’s pretty simple really,” he tells Teddy, because despite all his show of reluctance, Teddy is a bright kid, and also he’s part of Draco’s family even if they don’t really talk about it.

He crosses the sticks on the ground, and sprinkles the salt, and he knows the sword is still as sharp as it was when he used to watch his own father doing this, all those years ago, because he sees the blood welling in his palm before he feels the sting of the cut, and then he clenches his fist and squeezes and blood dapples the ground. Despite themselves, the others have gone quiet.

This is the embarrassing bit, Draco thinks, but there isn’t really anything for it, so he says the spell clearly, even the cheesy _blood of my blood_ bit, and then he takes the sword and steadies himself, and _cuts_ the air. There’s a second when nothing happens, and Draco wonders if he’s going to be able to breathe with the embarrassment, but then the space starts to open, unfurling out and up, and then he hears the wingbeats and the wyvern is there, high above the treeline. Harry comes up beside him, but his eyes are on Draco and not the sky, and he has that dark complicated desperate look he gets sometimes, but usually when it’s just the two of them.

Around them a crowd has formed, and everyone is oohing and aahing, and the wyvern hovers steadily, batting its wings playfully until Draco’s hair whips around his face. Then it drops gently, its unearthly white hide incongruous against the grass, and Draco gets to pet it a bit, as it knocks at him blindly and devotedly with its enormous snout. It even holds still long enough for Teddy to have a quick stroke, though once it starts getting restless again Draco gives it a farewell pat and quickly kicks the sticks out of alignment, and when he takes the sword up again the wyvern sails into a swooping arc and disappears.

Teddy is flushed with excitement, talking to Marie who’s listening fondly and looking healthy under her woolly hat, and Teddy looks so like Harry in that one unguarded moment that Draco’s chest feels a bit tight. 

“You’re so good with him,” Harry says quietly, and he puts an arm around Draco’s neck so he can get even closer. “He’s so happy when you’re around.”

He’s smiling and he works hard to keep his voice light, but Draco can hear the thin thread of regret, because Harry still can’t quite work out how Teddy went, so quickly, from being a boy to being a teenager. He worries about Teddy all the time, especially since he started school, and Teddy, who’s been loved all his life and is confident that he always will be, has no compunction about being a little shit to the people who care about him. And Harry cares about him the most. 

Draco doesn’t even think he really is that good with Teddy. He remembers the early days after he and Harry started out, Teddy aged ten and getting taller, but still building elaborate castles out of bricks, and playing dangerous made-up games with Harry, and eyeing Draco suspiciously across the dinner table. Harry had wanted them to get along so badly, and Draco had been so awful around children in general, not having been a particularly nice one himself. But this quiet angry Teddy is much easier for Draco to understand, and anyway he’d never stop trying for Harry’s sake. 

He kisses Harry quickly, just something small designed to soothe, and then Teddy comes up from behind them and Harry drops away quickly, probably expecting the easy exasperation Teddy tends towards whenever he sees them touching.

“So, you can call it up any time you want it?” Teddy asks him, and Draco very seriously tells him some of the stories he’s heard himself from his father many times, about all the awful Malfoys through history and their escapades with the wyvern, and even about the time that Lucius had lost his waist-length ponytail to a stray gout of flame and had to wear an elaborate wide-brimmed hat to the Hogwarts Governors’ Gala. 

“And then your kids will be able to call it up too?” Teddy asks when he’s finished laughing (he hates Lucius about as much as everyone else, though Draco is relieved that he’s not in the least bit scared of him, which is a beautiful thing to see). His face clears then tightens up. He suddenly looks older.

“Theoretically.” Draco is careful. “If I had children, then yes.”

“Well,” Teddy says impatiently, “when you and Harry have kids—” He looks down at the ground, and his face is blotchy.

“Harry and I…” Draco sighs. “I don’t know if I’ll ever have children. I didn’t have the best role model, you know. And Harry. Well, Harry already has you.”

Teddy looks up at him, eyes bright with fury and something small and hopeful. 

“God, you two are the worst,” he says scornfully. “You just don’t get it.” He sighs heavily, a long-suffering dramatic gust that teenage Draco would have been proud of, and rolls his eyes at Draco before slowing his steps ever so casually until Harry draws up beside him. Draco determinedly doesn’t watch them—he needs to chat to Marie anyway, because he has a long afternoon at a Weasley family get-together ahead, which he needs to complain about in advance to get it all out of his system. But as they all stroll along, he can hear the low, warm rumble of Harry chatting happily, and Teddy’s cheerful replies, and together they all make for home.

* * *

It’s the middle of the night by the time they get to bed, though Draco can hear the distant sound of someone drunkenly singing Christmas carols in the street outside. Harry must have left the window up.

As dinner parties go, it had at least been an eventful one, Draco thinks.

"Ron? _Really_?” Harry says, and his voice is a bit high and annoyed, like it gets when he’s properly pissed off about something.

“I don’t like it any more than you do!” Draco wishes he sounded less defensive, but he’s exhausted after a long day of trying to be friends with various Weasleys, and he doesn’t have the energy. His eyes feel scratchy, his body strung tight with the strain of the day, quivering with tiredness. He’s too tired to sleep.

Harry moves away from him, just a little bit closer to the other side of their big bed, though he turns on the pillow so he’s watching Draco. His glasses are off, and in the strange spill of winter moonlight, across the stretch of white linen, he’s washed out and colourless, nothing like himself. His mouth is a petulant curl.

Draco wants to kiss him.

“We need to sleep,” Harry says finally, firmly. “Early start tomorrow.” He doesn’t close his eyes.

“You’re the one who said he looked good tonight,” Draco says, and he can’t help himself, he stretches slowly across the space in the bed until he can feel Harry’s heat. “Anyway, I can’t sleep.” He edges nearer still.

This close, it’s easier, with his face in Harry’s curls—smelling of smoke and sky from the night flight across London—and the long smooth stretch of Harry’s solid flank under his hand.

“Do you want to put some music on?” Harry asks, and his voice is slightly blurry with tiredness and the low dirty edge of desire as he shivers into Draco’s touch.

“No, it’s good,” Draco says. “Just… keep talking. I want to be able to hear you.” 

Harry groans, takes Draco’s mouth under his own like he can’t help himself, teeth to lip in a flash of something a little bit wild and wanting, then tongue to tongue, too eager to be gentle, and Draco opens up for him, already overheated and squirming.

“I thought you were too tired?” Harry says, and he leans up and over and presses Draco back into the pillow. “ _I’m_ too tired. I can hardly move.” But even as he says it he drops his mouth to Draco’s cheek, kisses him sweetly, and his hand is a hot greedy clasp around Draco’s throat. He squeezes, barely a flex of the fingers before he releases again, but it leaves Draco panting.

“Why don’t we just…” Draco says, not sure what he’s saying, not sure what he wants, but _wanting_ nonetheless, all of the day’s tension gathering, seething, rising up in the sharp arch of his back and the ungraceful heave of his chest. Harry’s mouth is at his nipple, his voice muffled by Draco’s skin, and he does in fact keep talking, because he’s a cheeky fucker.

“I didn’t think Ron was your type, that’s all,” he says, and he trembles a bit as he lies down on top of Draco, his breath catching in his throat at every kiss they share.

“I don’t—” Draco begins, but Harry pulls back again, looks at him crossly, then slides his thumb into Draco’s mouth, chastising, viciously intimate.

“I _saw_ you,” he says, “and you couldn’t keep your eyes off him. I know what you look like when…” and because he doesn’t want to hear any more of this, Draco flips them again, though he can barely keep Harry pinned under him, and Harry’s thumb slips from his mouth in the shift.

“I was surprised,” Draco says. “He’s filled out. And I wasn’t _looking_.” This bit feels important, because he knows Harry doesn’t look, because Harry only looks at what he wants, and his eyes are always on Draco. “I _wasn’t_ looking. I just happened to see. It’s not the same.”

“Well. Good.” Harry still sounds cross, but he’s slowing down a bit, voice low and sweet with breathless anticipation. “Because,” he continues, “I don’t like it.” He pauses, shakes his curls back off his face, then holds himself tense, as Draco moves down his body. “I don’t like it when… Draco—” and he pushes himself upwards with a groan, chasing Draco’s mouth with his hips, muffling his own sounds against the back of his hand. His body curves gracefully, like a wingspan or the clean arc of a harbour bridge, opening skywards.

It doesn’t take long, because Draco is so eager, and Harry so ready for him, stretched out across their big bed, and soon Harry tugs at Draco’s hair, still gentle after everything, pulls him all the way up so they’re flush, counterweighted, locked together in this familiar desperation.

“I thought I was too tired,” Harry says into Draco’s mouth, and Draco presses down harder on him and then wriggles a hand between them. “And too cross with you about Ron.”

“It’s still difficult, you know,” Draco says, trying to keep his breath even. “And it’s entirely your fault that I even have to see a topless Weasley at all. I’m doing it for you. I never expected to like him, you know. And I certainly never expected him to be all—” He props himself up on one elbow to make a hand-wavey gesture. Under him, Harry is starting, finally, to look amused. “He’s good-looking!”

“All the Weasleys are good-looking,” Harry says solemnly, and Draco knows it’s true (and he’s seen how Harry keeps a careful distance from Charlie, not that Draco would mind. Harry is an all-or-nothing type, and Draco’s had all of him for a long time now). 

But not all the Weasleys are kind, nor would Draco expect them to be, not with the constant reminders of their history and the conspicuous Malfoy blond hair across from them at the dinner table. Molly, her mouth set thin, trying to be generous, but still looking at Harry worriedly even now, two years down the line. George, barely civil, often drunk, never really wanting to be at these dinner parties, always looking for something lost; he nearly punched Draco at Harry’s last birthday party, and Draco would have let him. Ginny’s alright—she’s practical, and was always tough, and she wants Harry to be happy. Draco can barely look at Bill even now, and Bill knows it, though he’s always distantly polite. Draco sometimes worries that Harry has forgiven him for everything too easily—forgiven him for who he used to be, for all the things he did. Draco doesn’t want him to do that. He’d rather Harry remembered. But at least the Weasleys haven’t forgotten.

But Ron—Draco never expected to _like_ Ron, or for Ron to like him back. But Draco does, and Ron does, and they both love Harry so much, and anyway Ron is practical above everything else. And it _is_ weird, to catch Ron Weasley’s eye across the pub and make the drink motion at him, and know what it is he’ll ask for. And it’s weird that Ron Weasley is on track to be Head Auror, and that he’s better at Quidditch now than he ever was at school, and that he makes an excellent roast dinner, and that he has a great set of forearms. And yes, it’s weird that he’s good-looking. But Draco can’t say anything of this to Harry.

“He’s ageing like a fine wine,” is all he says, and it’s not really fair, because Draco looks the same as he did back in Sixth Year (only older), pale and sharp and worried, and not like someone Harry Potter should be in love with at all. And Harry, hair streaming over the pillow, with his generous, sulky mouth wet and gleaming from Draco’s kisses, and his eyes overbright—well, Harry is perfect as he is, and Harry will never change, or at least Draco will never be far enough away from his face to notice it changing, not if he can help it anyway.

“Just as long as you don’t want to fuck Ron,” Harry says, and Draco tightens his grip. 

“I don’t want to fuck Ron,” he says, and it’s true. “I only want to fuck you.”

Harry comes, quietly, hips a slow stutter, all over Draco’s hand, and Draco whispers, “That’s good, that’s so good, I only want you, it’s only ever you,” because he can say things like that at times like these, when it’s just them in the dark, so close together that they shape themselves around each other.

Harry sighs, yawns, reaches half-heartedly for Draco, who bats him away and kneels up, already so close that his own hand is enough, feeling the preemptive shiver of exhaustion under the building tension of pleasure that means he’ll be able to sleep, soon.

“Sometimes,” Draco says breathlessly, “I hate that I’m going to feel like this about you forever,” and Harry laughs at that, rolls over in the bed, though he keeps one hand on Draco’s hip as he rummages in his bedside cabinet.

“Speaking of forever,” he says, and then he rolls back under Draco just in time to catch him when he drops loose and satiated, shaking with release. Harry has one arm around Draco’s neck, and he’s very pink and pleased-looking, and when Draco stretches out beside him and presses along his side, his arm tightens.

“I got you this,” he says, and places a small box on his own bare stomach. It sits there incongruously, right on the softest part of Harry, covered in slightly threadbare velvet with a tiny jewelled button at the front—antique, obviously, Draco doesn’t even need to ask. It shifts slightly with every softening breath that Harry takes.

Draco pushes it open, too hasty with irritation at the tremble of his finger, and then he sees the ring. 

“It’s very plain,” Harry says, frowning, and Draco laughs shakily. “There was another, with a sapphire… anyway, Fand said… But, you will, won’t you? Marry me?”

The ring is slim, a pale clear gold, engraved with Tudor roses, and when Draco lifts it out of the box it’s already skinwarm. It should probably be in a museum, he thinks.

“It has… here, look inside.” Harry leans over, thumbs at the edge of the ring to turn it in Draco’s fingers, and he sees the inscription running around the inside of the ring, its uneven lettering stamping out a declaration of love that’s probably five hundred years old, if Draco’s any judge. _I like my choyse_.

“Oh,” Draco says, stupidly, and then shuts his mouth tightly, not trusting himself, and Harry pushes it onto his finger clumsily and then smiles at him helplessly, sheepishly, like he can’t stop and doesn’t want to, and Draco feels cold and then hot all of a sudden so he has to put his face right in the curve of Harry’s neck and just breathe him in for a minute.

“It can’t have been a surprise?” Harry says, and he’s properly laughing now. When Draco answers, his voice is muffled over Harry’s skin.

“Teddy told me months ago that he thought you were going to ask, but I didn’t think I’d… it’s not something I would have imagined wanting.” Until now, he thinks, with the sight of the little box set against the softer velvet of Harry’s belly. “I don’t have a ring for you though. Would you…” He knows he’s blushing, at just the thought of Harry’s hand—the capable span of his palm, and the crest of the knuckles, and the pale faded remnants of old scars, heartline and lifeline and fateline—and the idea of his own token settled around Harry’s ring finger, something to declare.

“We can look for one after Christmas. I didn’t think you’d be so romantic about this,” Harry says delightedly. “I should have got down on one knee.”

“I can take care of the paperwork,” Draco says faintly. “It would only be a courtesy title anyway, but you don’t want to be saddled with Lord Malfoy, even nominally. I can sort the legal side to keep you—keep _it_ simple.”

Harry watches him, clear-eyed, assessing, endlessly fond.

“We can double-barrel,” he says, and then they’re kissing carefully, and Draco has Harry’s face in his hands, and his heart feels very full. In the moon’s clean winter light Draco’s ring is bright and obtrusive, the weight of five hundred years of intention sitting lightly on his left hand. 

He likes his choice.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr and always love to chat - click here!


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